path: root/doc/start/hardware-recommendations.rst

.. _hardware-recommendations:

==========================
 Hardware Recommendations
==========================

Ceph was designed to run on commodity hardware, which makes building and
maintaining petabyte-scale data clusters economically feasible. 
When planning out your cluster hardware, you will need to balance a number 
of considerations, including failure domains and potential performance
issues. Hardware planning should include distributing Ceph daemons and 
other processes that use Ceph across many hosts. Generally, we recommend 
running Ceph daemons of a specific type on a host configured for that type 
of daemon. We recommend using other hosts for processes that utilize your 
data cluster (e.g., OpenStack, CloudStack, etc).


.. tip:: Check out the `Ceph blog`_ too.


CPU
===

CephFS metadata servers (MDS) are CPU-intensive. CephFS metadata servers (MDS)
should therefore have quad-core (or better) CPUs and high clock rates (GHz). OSD
nodes need enough processing power to run the RADOS service, to calculate data
placement with CRUSH, to replicate data, and to maintain their own copies of the
cluster map.

The requirements of one Ceph cluster are not the same as the requirements of
another, but here are some general guidelines. 

In earlier versions of Ceph, we would make hardware recommendations based on
the number of cores per OSD, but this cores-per-OSD metric is no longer as
useful a metric as the number of cycles per IOP and the number of IOPs per OSD.
For example, for NVMe drives, Ceph can easily utilize five or six cores on real
clusters and up to about fourteen cores on single OSDs in isolation. So cores
per OSD are no longer as pressing a concern as they were. When selecting
hardware, select for IOPs per core.

Monitor nodes and manager nodes have no heavy CPU demands and require only
modest processors. If your host machines will run CPU-intensive processes in
addition to Ceph daemons, make sure that you have enough processing power to
run both the CPU-intensive processes and the Ceph daemons. (OpenStack Nova is
one such example of a CPU-intensive process.) We recommend that you run
non-Ceph CPU-intensive processes on separate hosts (that is, on hosts that are
not your monitor and manager nodes) in order to avoid resource contention.

RAM
===

Generally, more RAM is better.  Monitor / manager nodes for a modest cluster
might do fine with 64GB; for a larger cluster with hundreds of OSDs 128GB
is a reasonable target.  There is a memory target for BlueStore OSDs that
defaults to 4GB.  Factor in a prudent margin for the operating system and
administrative tasks (like monitoring and metrics) as well as increased
consumption during recovery:  provisioning ~8GB per BlueStore OSD
is advised.

Monitors and managers (ceph-mon and ceph-mgr)
---------------------------------------------

Monitor and manager daemon memory usage generally scales with the size of the
cluster.  Note that at boot-time and during topology changes and recovery these
daemons will need more RAM than they do during steady-state operation, so plan
for peak usage. For very small clusters, 32 GB suffices. For clusters of up to,
say, 300 OSDs go with 64GB. For clusters built with (or which will grow to)
even more OSDs you should provision 128GB. You may also want to consider
tuning the following settings:

* `mon_osd_cache_size`
* `rocksdb_cache_size`


Metadata servers (ceph-mds)
---------------------------

The metadata daemon memory utilization depends on how much memory its cache is
configured to consume.  We recommend 1 GB as a minimum for most systems.  See
``mds_cache_memory``.

Memory
======

Bluestore uses its own memory to cache data rather than relying on the
operating system's page cache. In Bluestore you can adjust the amount of memory
that the OSD attempts to consume by changing the `osd_memory_target`
configuration option.

- Setting the `osd_memory_target` below 2GB is typically not
  recommended (Ceph may fail to keep the memory consumption under 2GB and 
  this may cause extremely slow performance).

- Setting the memory target between 2GB and 4GB typically works but may result
  in degraded performance: metadata may be read from disk during IO unless the
  active data set is relatively small.

- 4GB is the current default `osd_memory_target` size. This default
  was chosen for typical use cases, and is intended to balance memory
  requirements and OSD performance.

- Setting the `osd_memory_target` higher than 4GB can improve
  performance when there many (small) objects or when large (256GB/OSD 
  or more) data sets are processed.

.. important:: OSD memory autotuning is "best effort". Although the OSD may
   unmap memory to allow the kernel to reclaim it, there is no guarantee that
   the kernel will actually reclaim freed memory within a specific time
   frame. This applies especially in older versions of Ceph, where transparent
   huge pages can prevent the kernel from reclaiming memory that was freed from
   fragmented huge pages. Modern versions of Ceph disable transparent huge
   pages at the application level to avoid this, but that does not
   guarantee that the kernel will immediately reclaim unmapped memory. The OSD
   may still at times exceed its memory target. We recommend budgeting 
   approximately 20% extra memory on your system to prevent OSDs from going OOM
   (**O**\ut **O**\f **M**\emory) during temporary spikes or due to delay in
   the kernel reclaiming freed pages. That 20% value might be more or less than
   needed, depending on the exact configuration of the system.

When using the legacy FileStore back end, the page cache is used for caching
data, so no tuning is normally needed. When using the legacy FileStore backend,
the OSD memory consumption is related to the number of PGs per daemon in the
system.


Data Storage
============

Plan your data storage configuration carefully. There are significant cost and
performance tradeoffs to consider when planning for data storage. Simultaneous
OS operations and simultaneous requests from multiple daemons for read and
write operations against a single drive can slow performance.

Hard Disk Drives
----------------

OSDs should have plenty of storage drive space for object data. We recommend a
minimum disk drive size of 1 terabyte. Consider the cost-per-gigabyte advantage
of larger disks. We recommend dividing the price of the disk drive by the
number of gigabytes to arrive at a cost per gigabyte, because larger drives may
have a significant impact on the cost-per-gigabyte. For example, a 1 terabyte
hard disk priced at $75.00 has a cost of $0.07 per gigabyte (i.e., $75 / 1024 =
0.0732). By contrast, a 3 terabyte disk priced at $150.00 has a cost of $0.05
per gigabyte (i.e., $150 / 3072 = 0.0488). In the foregoing example, using the
1 terabyte disks would generally increase the cost per gigabyte by
40%--rendering your cluster substantially less cost efficient.

.. tip:: Running multiple OSDs on a single SAS / SATA drive
   is **NOT** a good idea.  NVMe drives, however, can achieve
   improved performance by being split into two or more OSDs.

.. tip:: Running an OSD and a monitor or a metadata server on a single 
   drive is also **NOT** a good idea.

.. tip:: With spinning disks, the SATA and SAS interface increasingly
   becomes a bottleneck at larger capacities. See also the `Storage Networking 
   Industry Association's Total Cost of Ownership calculator`_.


Storage drives are subject to limitations on seek time, access time, read and
write times, as well as total throughput. These physical limitations affect
overall system performance--especially during recovery. We recommend using a
dedicated (ideally mirrored) drive for the operating system and software, and
one drive for each Ceph OSD Daemon you run on the host (modulo NVMe above).
Many "slow OSD" issues (when they are not attributable to hardware failure)
arise from running an operating system and multiple OSDs on the same drive.

It is technically possible to run multiple Ceph OSD Daemons per SAS / SATA
drive, but this will lead to resource contention and diminish overall
throughput.

To get the best performance out of Ceph, run the following on separate drives:
(1) operating systems, (2) OSD data, and (3) BlueStore db.  For more
information on how to effectively use a mix of fast drives and slow drives in
your Ceph cluster, see the `block and block.db`_ section of the Bluestore
Configuration Reference.

Solid State Drives
------------------

Ceph performance can be improved by using solid-state drives (SSDs). This
reduces random access time and reduces latency while accelerating throughput. 

SSDs cost more per gigabyte than do hard disk drives, but SSDs often offer
access times that are, at a minimum, 100 times faster than hard disk drives.
SSDs avoid hotspot issues and bottleneck issues within busy clusters, and
they may offer better economics when TCO is evaluated holistically.

SSDs do not have moving mechanical parts, so they are not necessarily subject
to the same types of limitations as hard disk drives. SSDs do have significant
limitations though. When evaluating SSDs, it is important to consider the
performance of sequential reads and writes.

.. important:: We recommend exploring the use of SSDs to improve performance. 
   However, before making a significant investment in SSDs, we **strongly
   recommend** reviewing the performance metrics of an SSD and testing the
   SSD in a test configuration in order to gauge performance. 

Relatively inexpensive SSDs may appeal to your sense of economy. Use caution.
Acceptable IOPS are not the only factor to consider when selecting an SSD for
use with Ceph. 

SSDs have historically been cost prohibitive for object storage, but emerging
QLC drives are closing the gap, offering greater density with lower power
consumption and less power spent on cooling. HDD OSDs may see a significant
performance improvement by offloading WAL+DB onto an SSD.

To get a better sense of the factors that determine the cost of storage, you
might use the `Storage Networking Industry Association's Total Cost of
Ownership calculator`_

Partition Alignment
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When using SSDs with Ceph, make sure that your partitions are properly aligned.
Improperly aligned partitions suffer slower data transfer speeds than do
properly aligned partitions. For more information about proper partition
alignment and example commands that show how to align partitions properly, see
`Werner Fischer's blog post on partition alignment`_.

CephFS Metadata Segregation
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One way that Ceph accelerates CephFS file system performance is by segregating
the storage of CephFS metadata from the storage of the CephFS file contents.
Ceph provides a default ``metadata`` pool for CephFS metadata. You will never
have to create a pool for CephFS metadata, but you can create a CRUSH map
hierarchy for your CephFS metadata pool that points only to SSD storage media.
See :ref:`CRUSH Device Class<crush-map-device-class>` for details.


Controllers
-----------

Disk controllers (HBAs) can have a significant impact on write throughput.
Carefully consider your selection of HBAs to ensure that they do not create a
performance bottleneck. Notably, RAID-mode (IR) HBAs may exhibit higher latency
than simpler "JBOD" (IT) mode HBAs. The RAID SoC, write cache, and battery
backup can substantially increase hardware and maintenance costs. Some RAID
HBAs can be configured with an IT-mode "personality".

.. tip:: The `Ceph blog`_ is often an excellent source of information on Ceph
   performance issues. See `Ceph Write Throughput 1`_ and `Ceph Write 
   Throughput 2`_ for additional details.


Benchmarking
------------

BlueStore opens block devices in O_DIRECT and uses fsync frequently to ensure
that data is safely persisted to media. You can evaluate a drive's low-level
write performance using ``fio``. For example, 4kB random write performance is
measured as follows:

.. code-block:: console

  # fio --name=/dev/sdX --ioengine=libaio --direct=1 --fsync=1 --readwrite=randwrite --blocksize=4k --runtime=300

Write Caches
------------

Enterprise SSDs and HDDs normally include power loss protection features which
use multi-level caches to speed up direct or synchronous writes.  These devices
can be toggled between two caching modes -- a volatile cache flushed to
persistent media with fsync, or a non-volatile cache written synchronously.

These two modes are selected by either "enabling" or "disabling" the write
(volatile) cache.  When the volatile cache is enabled, Linux uses a device in
"write back" mode, and when disabled, it uses "write through".

The default configuration (normally caching enabled) may not be optimal, and
OSD performance may be dramatically increased in terms of increased IOPS and
decreased commit_latency by disabling the write cache.

Users are therefore encouraged to benchmark their devices with ``fio`` as
described earlier and persist the optimal cache configuration for their
devices.

The cache configuration can be queried with ``hdparm``, ``sdparm``,
``smartctl`` or by reading the values in ``/sys/class/scsi_disk/*/cache_type``,
for example:

.. code-block:: console

  # hdparm -W /dev/sda

  /dev/sda:
   write-caching =  1 (on)

  # sdparm --get WCE /dev/sda
      /dev/sda: ATA       TOSHIBA MG07ACA1  0101
  WCE           1  [cha: y]
  # smartctl -g wcache /dev/sda
  smartctl 7.1 2020-04-05 r5049 [x86_64-linux-4.18.0-305.19.1.el8_4.x86_64] (local build)
  Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

  Write cache is:   Enabled

  # cat /sys/class/scsi_disk/0\:0\:0\:0/cache_type
  write back

The write cache can be disabled with those same tools:

.. code-block:: console

  # hdparm -W0 /dev/sda

  /dev/sda:
   setting drive write-caching to 0 (off)
   write-caching =  0 (off)

  # sdparm --clear WCE /dev/sda
      /dev/sda: ATA       TOSHIBA MG07ACA1  0101
  # smartctl -s wcache,off /dev/sda
  smartctl 7.1 2020-04-05 r5049 [x86_64-linux-4.18.0-305.19.1.el8_4.x86_64] (local build)
  Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

  === START OF ENABLE/DISABLE COMMANDS SECTION ===
  Write cache disabled

Normally, disabling the cache using ``hdparm``, ``sdparm``, or ``smartctl``
results in the cache_type changing automatically to "write through". If this is
not the case, you can try setting it directly as follows. (Users should note
that setting cache_type also correctly persists the caching mode of the device
until the next reboot):

.. code-block:: console

  # echo "write through" > /sys/class/scsi_disk/0\:0\:0\:0/cache_type

  # hdparm -W /dev/sda

  /dev/sda:
   write-caching =  0 (off)

.. tip:: This udev rule (tested on CentOS 8) will set all SATA/SAS device cache_types to "write
  through":

  .. code-block:: console

    # cat /etc/udev/rules.d/99-ceph-write-through.rules
    ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="scsi_disk", ATTR{cache_type}:="write through"

.. tip:: This udev rule (tested on CentOS 7) will set all SATA/SAS device cache_types to "write
  through":

  .. code-block:: console

    # cat /etc/udev/rules.d/99-ceph-write-through-el7.rules
    ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="scsi_disk", RUN+="/bin/sh -c 'echo write through > /sys/class/scsi_disk/$kernel/cache_type'"

.. tip:: The ``sdparm`` utility can be used to view/change the volatile write
  cache on several devices at once:

  .. code-block:: console

    # sdparm --get WCE /dev/sd*
        /dev/sda: ATA       TOSHIBA MG07ACA1  0101
    WCE           0  [cha: y]
        /dev/sdb: ATA       TOSHIBA MG07ACA1  0101
    WCE           0  [cha: y]
    # sdparm --clear WCE /dev/sd*
        /dev/sda: ATA       TOSHIBA MG07ACA1  0101
        /dev/sdb: ATA       TOSHIBA MG07ACA1  0101

Additional Considerations
-------------------------

You typically will run multiple OSDs per host, but you should ensure that the
aggregate throughput of your OSD drives doesn't exceed the network bandwidth
required to service a client's need to read or write data. You should also
consider what percentage of the overall data the cluster stores on each host. If
the percentage on a particular host is large and the host fails, it can lead to
problems such as exceeding the ``full ratio``,  which causes Ceph to halt
operations as a safety precaution that prevents data loss.

When you run multiple OSDs per host, you also need to ensure that the kernel
is up to date. See `OS Recommendations`_ for notes on ``glibc`` and
``syncfs(2)`` to ensure that your hardware performs as expected when running
multiple OSDs per host.


Networks
========

Provision at least 10 Gb/s networking in your racks.

Speed
-----

It takes three hours to replicate 1 TB of data across a 1 Gb/s network and it
takes thirty hours to replicate 10 TB across a 1 Gb/s network. But it takes only
twenty minutes to replicate 1 TB across a 10 Gb/s network, and it takes
only one hour to replicate 10 TB across a 10 Gb/s network. 

Cost
----

The larger the Ceph cluster, the more common OSD failures will be.
The faster that a placement group (PG) can recover from a ``degraded`` state to
an ``active + clean`` state, the better. Notably, fast recovery minimizes
the liklihood of multiple, overlapping failures that can cause data to become
temporarily unavailable or even lost. Of course, when provisioning your
network, you will have to balance price against performance. 

Some deployment tools employ VLANs to make hardware and network cabling more
manageable. VLANs that use the 802.1q protocol require VLAN-capable NICs and
switches. The added expense of this hardware may be offset by the operational
cost savings on network setup and maintenance. When using VLANs to handle VM
traffic between the cluster and compute stacks (e.g., OpenStack, CloudStack,
etc.), there is additional value in using 10 Gb/s Ethernet or better; 40 Gb/s or
25/50/100 Gb/s networking as of 2022 is common for production clusters.

Top-of-rack (TOR) switches also need fast and redundant uplinks to spind
spine switches / routers, often at least 40 Gb/s.


Baseboard Management Controller (BMC)
-------------------------------------

Your server chassis should have a Baseboard Management Controller (BMC).
Well-known examples are iDRAC (Dell), CIMC (Cisco UCS), and iLO (HPE).
Administration and deployment tools may also use BMCs extensively, especially
via IPMI or Redfish, so consider the cost/benefit tradeoff of an out-of-band
network for security and administration.  Hypervisor SSH access, VM image uploads,
OS image installs, management sockets, etc. can impose significant loads on a network.
Running three networks may seem like overkill, but each traffic path represents
a potential capacity, throughput and/or performance bottleneck that you should
carefully consider before deploying a large scale data cluster.
 

Failure Domains
===============

A failure domain is any failure that prevents access to one or more OSDs. That
could be a stopped daemon on a host; a disk failure, an OS crash, a
malfunctioning NIC, a failed power supply, a network outage, a power outage,
and so forth. When planning out your hardware needs, you must balance the
temptation to reduce costs by placing too many responsibilities into too few
failure domains, and the added costs of isolating every potential failure
domain.


Minimum Hardware Recommendations
================================

Ceph can run on inexpensive commodity hardware. Small production clusters
and development clusters can run successfully with modest hardware.

+--------------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
|  Process     | Criteria       | Minimum Recommended                     |
+==============+================+=========================================+
| ``ceph-osd`` | Processor      | - 1 core minimum                        |
|              |                | - 1 core per 200-500 MB/s               |
|              |                | - 1 core per 1000-3000 IOPS             |
|              |                |                                         |
|              |                | * Results are before replication.       |
|              |                | * Results may vary with different       |
|              |                |   CPU models and Ceph features.         |
|              |                |   (erasure coding, compression, etc)    |
|              |                | * ARM processors specifically may       |
|              |                |   require additional cores.             |
|              |                | * Actual performance depends on many    |
|              |                |   factors including drives, net, and    |
|              |                |   client throughput and latency.        |
|              |                |   Benchmarking is highly recommended.   |
|              +----------------+-----------------------------------------+
|              | RAM            | - 4GB+ per daemon (more is better)      |
|              |                | - 2-4GB often functions (may be slow)   |
|              |                | - Less than 2GB not recommended         |
|              +----------------+-----------------------------------------+
|              | Volume Storage |  1x storage drive per daemon            |
|              +----------------+-----------------------------------------+
|              | DB/WAL         |  1x SSD partition per daemon (optional) |
|              +----------------+-----------------------------------------+
|              | Network        |  1x 1GbE+ NICs (10GbE+ recommended)     |
+--------------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
| ``ceph-mon`` | Processor      | - 2 cores minimum                       |
|              +----------------+-----------------------------------------+
|              | RAM            |  2-4GB+ per daemon                      |
|              +----------------+-----------------------------------------+
|              | Disk Space     |  60 GB per daemon                       |
|              +----------------+-----------------------------------------+
|              | Network        |  1x 1GbE+ NICs                          |
+--------------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
| ``ceph-mds`` | Processor      | - 2 cores minimum                       |
|              +----------------+-----------------------------------------+
|              | RAM            |  2GB+ per daemon                        |
|              +----------------+-----------------------------------------+
|              | Disk Space     |  1 MB per daemon                        |
|              +----------------+-----------------------------------------+
|              | Network        |  1x 1GbE+ NICs                          |
+--------------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+

.. tip:: If you are running an OSD with a single disk, create a
   partition for your volume storage that is separate from the partition
   containing the OS. Generally, we recommend separate disks for the
   OS and the volume storage.



.. _block and block.db: https://docs.ceph.com/en/latest/rados/configuration/bluestore-config-ref/#block-and-block-db
.. _Ceph blog: https://ceph.com/community/blog/
.. _Ceph Write Throughput 1: http://ceph.com/community/ceph-performance-part-1-disk-controller-write-throughput/
.. _Ceph Write Throughput 2: http://ceph.com/community/ceph-performance-part-2-write-throughput-without-ssd-journals/
.. _Mapping Pools to Different Types of OSDs: ../../rados/operations/crush-map#placing-different-pools-on-different-osds
.. _OS Recommendations: ../os-recommendations
.. _Storage Networking Industry Association's Total Cost of Ownership calculator: https://www.snia.org/forums/cmsi/programs/TCOcalc
.. _Werner Fischer's blog post on partition alignment: https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/Partition_Alignment_detailed_explanation